


she is there to greet the world

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Fog, Gen, Hogwarts, Knitting, Magic, Thestrals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 10:02:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5864932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Foggy days, however.  Here, in Scotland, in this crib to magic, fog is a misty breath that never falters. And it is unkind, to expect the sun to be brave every day.</em>
</p><p> <br/>Luna Lovegood and the many dawns of Hogwarts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	she is there to greet the world

In the early morning fog, when the sky is more ink than parchment and the water slipping sliding falling in the grass wets her trousers and the tender flesh beneath, Luna dances.

Not a waltz, or a foxtrot, or an old ageless song. She skips, and twirls, and trips like she means to, like the fall didn't hurt at all. She hardly feels it. She falls and gets up and lies down, looking up and around at the ever moving fog, a slow mourner's nearly grey veil, a wedding train. She is cold because she feels, and for that alone she loves the cold, the pebble digging into her back, the all consuming smell of saturated soil. The world is pregnant. It stirs, toes curled under cotton-cloud blankets.

The cold embraces. It sinks, settles in the corner of a breastbone, the curve of a hip, a thigh. Around her neck a scarf; he mother's courting gift to her father, in the colors of their patroness, old worn fleece in the shades of copper and sky, ink and hair. No knitting spell-puppeteer controls the needles; their shared wands were the needles, the spells soundless wishes. Small things, a lifetime of those: full days, vibrant nights, companionship; time well spent, well loved. There are spells woven in the threads, an enchantment for every stitch. A labor of love from a witch to a wizard, a show of trust when he gave her his wand in the name of trust; a prized memento passed on their child. Warmth shared, in blood and scarves and the sweet curve of a child's ear.

For every thing a season, a flower, a growing and a withering. These things Luna was taught, because nature is mother is teacher is murderer. A treasure for every season - the world is a hungry beast, a lazy heedless beast. It won't be tamed, so better not to try. Better to walk the grass and remember the dead beneath, the flowers that were once, the bones, and think ' _there will be more flowers, more bones. i wonder what will linger of the old ones. i wonder what they will have only of their own.'_

Luna feeds the thestrals every morning of every season, but it's in winter that she likes to ride them, so her warmth and their warmth can be a shared gift, friendship-token, and her cheeks may sting most pleasantly in wind-kisses through low swoops over low clouds or naked finger-trees in the edge of the forbidden. In spring she likes to wet her feet on the lake and make boats out of bark and leaves for the giant squid to play with. Everyone should have a treasured you of their own, even if they are always swallowed. In the summer, when the pumpkins show the first of their almost-roundness, she likes to sit between them and knit, one wand stitches only.

Foggy days, however. Here, in Scotland, in this crib to magic, fog is a misty breath that never falters. And it is unkind, to expect the sun to be brave every day. Foggy mornings may turn to bold bright days, but a little bit of their cloudy clearness stays 'till the next morning. Foggy days are for the cold earth that never shivers, the scent of waking things. Waking up slowly, like a thaw, like a blooming, yawns hidden in sky-hair tinted fleece.

Luna dances, and when she tires of making harmonies of her own she falls down to this green scratchy bed. She puts her ear to the beating ground, the other to the blanketed sky, and listens. The dead things grow back; she closes her eyes and wakes up. 


End file.
